Retro Spotlight

Going on three years now, Freedom Planet launched on Steam after a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2012. For the uninitiated, Freedom Planet drew heavy inspiration from Sonic the Hedgehog, while also adding a huge emphasis on combat and exploration. Fast forward to now, and we’re highly anticipating the release of the sequel, Freedom Planet 2. Sporting a fresh look, new engine, and so much more, GalaxyTrail is looking to up their game significantly. We sat down with Strife, a very active member of the Retro forums, to discuss the sequel, transitioning tools, and much more.

The first incarnation ofNazo Unleashed was released on Newgrounds a little over 10 years ago as of this month. For a lot of fans, seeing Sonic combined with the action of Dragon Ball Z just clicked. Over the years, Aaron Cowdery a.k.a. Chakra-X, has proceeded to release high definition remasters of the original before eventually opening up a Patreon to support his latest endeavor, Sonic: The Wrath of Nazo. We interviewed Chakra-X and several members of the Nazo Unleashed team about the project, their own history, and what we can expect to see in 2019.Continue Reading

2.5D might be one of the best ways to blend new with the old. Scenery, characters, objects, everything in a title can take advantage of modern day hardware while still feeling like the games of yesterday. The Sonic series began to take to 2.5D more and more starting with Sonic Unleashed, with the entire “boost trilogy” doing the brunt of the platforming in the 2.5D sections, with the high speed antics in 3D, almost racing-esque segments.

In 2013, a Retro user by the name of Ell678 began work on his own Sonic fan game, one that would be comprised almost entirely in 2.5D by utilizing SonicGDK. Since that point in time, Sonic Incursion has begun to take shape into the extraordinary title we see here today. A huge fan of the early Genesis games, Ell678 felt he could take what he adored about the level design the two games had and put it into something modern while still maintaining a “classic” presentation.